artists

Timo Kahlen

1966, Berlin, DE
Lives in Berlin, DE

Swarm, 2008
Sound installation

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Timo Kahlen’s acoustic interventions aim at filling a specific site with complex, artificial or descriptive sounds that are a brought across via a certain object. His installations are mostly based on a scientific reflection of sounds and nature. For his project in Fortezza / Franzensfeste Timo Kahlen opts to address the visitors when they make their very first steps into the courtyard of the Fortress. The sound sculpture SWARM emits an altered, abstracted, recomposed sound of bees, encased within a metal construction. Humming calmly, then becoming distorted, slightly agitated, progressively more aggressive, the installation creates acoustic chaos and even a perceptible vibration from inside the encasement, before returning to a softly buzzing hum. The military function of the fortress is mirrored in the construction of the sculpture. Its shape is defensive, armored with riveted sheets of steel, evoking the form of an object of warfare. Its potential for aggression and its aura of alertness reflects the color and consistency of the granite stone and monochrome roof tiles of the fortress. It becomes integrated into the site. During the exhibition, rust will gradually change the metal surface of Kahlen’s sound object.

Location

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Situated on one of Europe’s most important travel routes, between Bolzano/Bozen and the Brenner pass, the fortress Fortezza/Franzensfeste will serve as one of Manifesta 7’s venues. It was built in the 1830s by the Habsburgian Empire in order to defend the north/south passage through the Dolomite mountain region from two sides. Shaped and ruled by changing military scenarios, which mostly remained imaginary, since the fortress has never witnessed battle, the site itself constitutes the basis for formulating the artistic context of the exhibition by Manifesta 7.
The project entitled Scenarios aims to transform the spectacular backdrop of Fortezza/Franzensfeste into a scripted space with voice recordings, text, light and landscape in order to alter our idea of how imaginary scenarios shape our understanding of past and future, circumstance and possibility. Scenarios will be an ‘immaterial’ exhibition, that attempts to shift the site of the exhibition to the imagination of the listening visitor. Writers from all over the world contribute texts to Scenarios, especially developed for this context. These texts reflect the processes of scenario production and imaginative possibility itself. As voice recordings, the texts are individually installed as sound works in the repetitive interior spaces of the fortress, in an architectural setting characterised by the absence of its historical users and the scenarios they were once part of.
Scenarios is a critical reflection of the role that scenarios occupy in our society and the individual or collective imaginary. Today, though often unconscious or involuntary, we are part of “scenarios” that have already been projected on and framed us, preconceived our presence, and conditioning the situations and experiences of everyday life. The project aims to make us reflect on how we come to complete the scenarios and stories by becoming part of them. As an exhibition project, Scenarios thus shows no (or little) images, but rather reflects on those already we carry with us, that are imposed on us, or which creative imagination brings about. It is meant to explicitly break with the regime of visibility, and the production of (material) evidence.
Adam Budak, Anselm Franke/Hila Peleg, Raqs Media Collective
SCENARIOS
Dramaturgy by Ant Hampton, Audio Design by Hannes Hoelzl, Furniture Design by Martino Gamper
CONTRIBUTORS
Shahid Amin, Hélène Binet, Brave New Alps, Adriana Cavarero, Mladen Dolar, Harun Farocki, Karø Goldt, Larry Gottheim, Renée Green, Timo Kahlen, Karl Kels, Thomas Meinecke, Glen Neath, Margareth Obexer, Philippe Rahm, Arundhati Roy, Saskia Sassen, Michael Snow, Saadi Yousef